Rival Kansas, hostile arena await Missouri men's basketball team

Kansas guard Sherron Collins celebrates at the end of an Wednesday's game against Baylor. The Bears gave the Jayhawks a tough game, but Kansas extended its home winning streak to 53.¦ Orlin Wagner/The Associated Press

As if seeing pictures of
basketball immortals like James Naismith, basketball’s inventor who founded and
coached Kansas’ team, aren’t enough to intimidate visiting teams, the video also flashes the numbers that justify every bit of glory
and hype that the program produces – 5 national championships, 13 Final Fours,
52 conference titles.

At this point, opposing
players can't help to wonder, How do you beat that? How do you win here?

“I always look at the
visiting team to see what they’re doing during that video,” Jim Marchiony,
Kansas’ associate athletics director, told the University Daily Kansan last
year.

If Marchiony looked at the
visiting sideline before No. 3 Kansas’ win Wednesday against Baylor, he would
have seen an empty bench. Baylor coach Scott Drew and his team left the floor
and huddled in a corridor for Drew’s final pregame instructions, a first at
Allen Fieldhouse.

“It was simply because we
knew we only had a minute and we wanted to go over what we wanted to do to
start the game,” Drew told the Kansas City Star. “There are no rules against it
or anything. We met in the hallway and discussed how we were going to handle
the beginning of the game.

“Their intro is pretty good and pretty long.
No disrespect or anything like that. One thing about Kansas fans is they’re
passionate and they’re good, and they’re knowledgeable.”

But the Bears received boos when they came
back onto the court.

“It was highly unusual,” Kansas coach Bill Self said to the
Star about Drew's decision. “We would never do that.”

Missouri coach Mike Anderson gave no
indication he would try a similar tactic to guard his players from Kansas’
intimidating video before the rivals square off Monday in Lawrence,
Kansas.

Anderson is no stranger to the nearly
impossible task that is winning at Allen Fieldhouse, where the Jayhawks have
lost 12 times in the past 15 years. The Tigers have lost by an average of 19
points in Anderson’s three trips to Lawrence as Missouri’s coach, including a
25-point loss last year.

Still, Anderson said players should get
excited about playing in one of the country’s best environments, even if
it’s a nightmare for visiting teams.

“If you’re a basketball
player, I think you look forward to playing in great venues, and it’s a great
venue,” Anderson said.

Senior guard J.T. Tiller said
Anderson simply tells his players the trip to Kansas is one of the games they can
really get excited about. Tiller said it will be up to older players like himself
to keep Missouri’s eight underclassmen calm.

“You’re going to have a lot
of butterflies at first,” Tiller said, but added it’s just a basketball game
after that.

Senior forward Keith Ramsey
described what it feels like to play there.

“It just drains you,” he
said. “As soon as you walk out, people just in you’re face, talking. I don’t
know how many they seat, but it’s just a lot of people screaming at you.”

Allen Fieldhouse holds 16,300
fans and has been sold out for the past 141 games. This year, the Jayhawks have
had a few close calls in the building in which they normally dominate. In January, they’ve
won twice by single digits, a rare occurrence at Allen Fieldhouse, against Baylor and
Cornell. Cornell led Kansas with less than five minutes to play, and
Baylor was within two in the closing minutes.

Even when Kansas plays
poorly, it almost always finds a way to win at home, as evidenced by the Baylor
and Cornell wins. That’s why Anderson is approaching the game with a level-headed disposition.

“To me, we want to go and see
if we can get better,” Anderson said. “I think that’s the key, you want to go
get better, do the things that we do. We know it’s going to be a big challenge,
I think that’s why they play the game.”